FILE – In this Feb. 12, 2018 file photo, New Orleans Pelicans guard Rajon Rondo (9) plays against the Detroit Pistons in the first half of an NBA basketball game in Detroit. Even when their respective teams were vicious rivals, Rondo often gave LeBron James high praise. He’ll now be giving him the ball. NBA free agency continued Monday, July 2, 2018 and so did the rebuild of the Los Angeles Lakers, with Rondo agreeing to a one-year, $9 million deal to pair up with James next season.(AP Photo/Paul Sancya, file)

“You better be right, because I’m scratching for minutes on this team,” he told Rondo.

Then Scalabrine flared into the corner and the defense didn’t notice, and Rondo got him the ball and Scalabrine scored.

“Even as a rookie he would change the play and it would work,” said Scalabrine, the former USC star, now a broadcaster for the Celtics. “He’s by far the smartest player I ever played with. With LeBron, now the Lakers have the two smartest players. They are going to make each other so much better.”

Or the Staples Center roof will start hissing like a stressed teapot.

The Lakers made exciting moves last week, but they also concocted a Rubik’s Cube with spikes sticking out.

James fondles the ball. So does Rondo. Lonzo Ball was supposed to be the point guard in perpetuity. Lance Stephenson is an NBA nomad, a potential rock in the team blender. JaVale McGee is the goofy Shaqtin’-A-Fool Hall of Famer.

Rondo changed Rivers’ plays all the time, without voicing an audible. At 21 he stood up to the decorated veterans around him, and they eventually learned that Rondo was a savant, with an endless memory for human geometry.

“He and Kendrick Perkins would definitely have been blamed if it didn’t work,” Scalabrine said. Rondo is 32. The Lakers will be Rondo’s fifth team in five seasons. But he was the problem-solver in the spring when New Orleans swept Portland, as he kept setting up Anthony Davis and Jrue Holiday.

There are no degrees of “unique,” but Rondo’s gifts have rarely been bestowed on the same person. At 6-foot-1 his wingspan is nearly 7 feet. He has oven-mitt hands. He is a trusty last-minute handler who struggles with foul shots. He has one of the most remote personalities in a notoriously chummy league.

“He’s matter of fact, no BS,” Scalabrine said. “He’s tough for the media because we’re not accustomed to walking into MIT and asking math questions, which is what it sounds like to him. He is headstrong, and it didn’t work in Dallas with a controlling coach. Rick Carlisle does a great job but he couldn’t embrace Rondo’s brilliance.

“You almost need to turn the keys with him. In this league there’s the philosophy about running something until it doesn’t work anymore. Rondo will run something, watch it work, then rip it out and save it for down the road. He would unfold those things, and I have seen him literally outcoach the other coach, just from the floor. You can’t put together a game plan against him.”

In 2012 Rondo had 37 consecutive games of double-figure assists, a streak that was only snapped by an ejection. The ball always starts in Rondo’s hands, but there is no static cling.

Scalabrine says Rondo will pump up Kyle Kuzma’s stats, too. But where does Brandon Ingram fit? Will the 3-point shooting continue to languish? Was there any defensive forethought to this? Those are questions written on a magic slate to be lifted before the 2019-20 season, when the Lakers hope to have another newsy July.

But this season has immense capacity to entertain. It would be odd if James and Rondo didn’t hold a point-counterpoint, or several, over the way things are run.

And Rondo remembers things. He tried to rough up Isaiah Thomas last year after the Celtics ham-handedly scheduled a video tribute to Thomas on the same night Pierce’s number was retired. Thomas had taken Boston to the conference final in 2017.

Allen, whose rift with his ‘08 mates has never really healed, wrote in his book that Rondo told the Springfield Three that he, not they, was the reason for that championship. He also wrote that Rivers would have traded Rondo to New Orleans but didn’t want to subject Coach Monty Williams to that hassle.

Rondo said Allen was “just trying to stay relevant,” but Allen is no longer on anybody’s floor. The Lakers just hope there’s enough wood for everyone.